Ingrid Michaelson
Be OK

Campus Correspondent Review By Chad Comello
North Central College

In one way, it’s a good thing when an artist gets heavy play on Gap commercials and popular shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “One Tree Hill.” On the other hand, they’ll have to prove with a follow-up project that it’s better than a mere fifteen minutes of famer. Ingrid Michaelson’s Be OK (her follow-up to the hit album Girls and Boys, which featured the cooing single “The Way I Am”) tries its darndest to live up to those expectations and gets the job done well enough.

Be OK is incessantly happy and those looking for more of “The Way I Am”-style pop won’t be let down. The foot-tapping title track demonstrates Michaelson’s adept vocal and song arranging abilities. She makes strong use of the mandolin on numerous tunes, which will remind listeners of another female singer-songwriter and her hit single: Colbie Caillat’s “Bubbly.” Michaelson is better than Caillat and Be OK proves it.

The only beef is that this shouldn’t really be an album. When removing the three live tracks and the reissued “The Way I Am” (no doubt reused here at the insistence of her label), there is barely enough material to warrant a full-length collection worth buying. Michaelson should have released the better songs (like the tender waltz “Oh What A Day” and the mandolin-driven duet-turned-stomping sing along “You And I”) as an EP or just waited until she had enough solid material. Granted, this disc was probably rushed to print because of her flashbulb success, and understandably so. While there’s the tendency to still smile along to Be OK, Michaelson deserves a better showcase for her infectious melodies than this album gives her.